Islington First London Borough To Be Powered Entirely By Social Media, Smugness

The London Borough of Islington has announced plans to generate its entire power requirements entirely through its inhabitants use of social media and the self satisfaction that they get from using these, and more importantly telling other people about such use.

Residents will be fitted with special beanie hats, developed in partnership with Apple, which absorb 80% of the wearers sense of self satisfaction at all the tweeting and facebook posting they have been doing, saving the power in a small organic battery which is USB compatible. The remaining 20% self satisfaction is used to slowly rotate the small propeller on top of the beanie hat which the creators reveal is an “important off-line signifier of the users buy-in to the scheme” although they are looking to improve efficiency further with future models and aim to install a feature which will tweet “#socailmedia OMG! #aheadofthecurve #islington” when the propeller goes really really fast.

Most residents seem taken with the hats and the scheme “Social media really is the most important thing that we can be doing” local web-designer and e-entrepreneur Lizzie Hurst explained “and knowing that me using it is saving the planet is a real win. And I love the 80s retro-ironic beanie hat, if you look at the hats facebook page I was one of the first hundred to ‘like’ it, knowing that such a simple thumbs up from me helps save the world gives me a tremendous sense of self worth, and soon that will be able to help power of leafy borough. LOL”.

However there have been voices of dissent from many local sceptics such as retired teacher Harry Volks who has been writing to the local council for weeks now claiming that social media can’t “actually power a fucking thing”. “It’s just insane” complained Volks, “you may as well try and power a local hospital through the power of prayer.”

Islington council e-leader Steve Danson, credited with spearheading the initiative, has countered that such negativity is “counter productive, 20th century un-thinking and could actively reduce the amount of power they can create”.
“People who opt out of social media are, in effect, increasing the taxpayer burden for all others. Whilst the technology might not actually work, in the truest sense of the word, the potential is there to be realised and anyway, we’ve cancelled our deal with the gas board and electric company already and couldn’t afford to pay them anymore if we wanted to.”

The council have also reminded citizens that any letters they received are not read, and that any concerns should be address via postings of disappointed looking cats on the councils MySpace board.